The electronic bell ringed as he slowly walked out of the dank bar into the great darkness of the city. The lights all around the city shined right in his eyes, a huge transition in dimness that would momentarily blind any normal man. But in this guy's case, it only served as an annoyance, nothing more. He walked through the street, which was suspended in the air, towards a dark alley that laid on the other side of 4th street. As he walked, police sirens could be heard, always screeching as a warning of the crime in New York. Large crowds of teenagers could be seen and heard as they moved as a big mass from one store to the next. The dark figure wished he were a kid again. It would lift all those horrible memories from his mind. The memories of his parents, his aunt, uncles. Everyone. Perishing in demonic flames. He closed his eyes, and continued to walk towards the alley. He had no time to think back to those times. He had to think about here and now. The present was most important. His grandmother always told him that the past was something to be learned from, and the future was something to prepare for, but the present was where you did both. A great figure of speech. He wondered if his grandmother made that up, or got that from an electro-dictionary.

He reached the end of the alley, and looked about, making sure no one was nearby. He kneeled down, and pressed a button on the wristpad that he had used previously to access the data on that disk. A digital grip pad appeared in his hand. It felt like gel, even though it didn't even exist at all, and was merely a projection to gather information. He pressed the first and third digital buttons, and the grip handle disappeared. He stood up, and waited for a few more seconds. A small hovercraft came in from the roof of a shop on 6th street. It streamed through the crowds, and through the two streets recklessly. He'd have to fix that. He didn't want that thing to ram into crowds and cause attention to be directed towards him. He watched as the hovercraft slowed its descent, and landed a few feet above the ground where he stood. The hovercraft was skinny, and had two engines on the front and the back. It was very similar to its ancient predecessor, the motorcycle. As he sat on it, he pressed a few buttons in quick succession, and was off towards the protected house of the mayor. No one really cared about the mayor, he didn't have any real power in the city. The military had mostly taken over decisions in New York. It perplexed him why this mission was to take out the mayor. It didn't matter to him. If it got him money, he'd do the job.

The hovercraft swooped over near the fence of the mayor's property, and zoomed up to a small hill overlooking the house. The house was white, and seemed even brighter with the huge lights surrounding it. Guards would come in and out of the house one at a time, and make their search routes. A grounded helicopter stood, just in case an emergency would break out. Other than those securities, there didn't seem to be any ceiling cannons, or rocket launcher placements. This would be much easier than the president assassination: another one of those useless, but lucrative kills.

He didn't know why he had become a bounty hunter and an assassin. The very ideas of those professions went directly against his personal values of honor. He was once a very honorable person. That was why he had helped the humans instead of using his abilities to take advantage of the pandemonium that had occurred during the initial attack on Earth itself. But when he had left Earth on the longsword, heading towards a colony, he had seemed to have changed. On the colony, he was to meet with his friends on the colony, creating a hideout for all of them until the conflict was finished. Except for him, all his friends had run from the conflicts, and had fled from the military drafts. Even though he didn't do the same, he didn't see their actions as cowardice as many would have. He saw it merely as a higher respect for life, and its value in the world. They just didn't think it was their place to extinguish it, Covenant or not. They had all collected as a small group on a seemingly abandoned colony to get away from all the bloodshed and war. Little did they know that it was actually a major staging ground of the government. The government discovered their hidden location, and began attacks on their hideout. As they fled again back to Earth, many of his friends had died from the outnumbering troops. He guessed that it was the reason why he had changed from his honorable ways. He had decided that the government was at fault for all this war and conflict. He blamed the government for everything, and hated it with all his heart. When he returned to Earth, he enlisted as a mercenary. At first it was only to assassinate the government figures as a sort of revenge for the deaths of his friends on the colony, but it became much larger than that. He soon spread his services from government to military figures. Then it came to powerful crime bosses. Soon it had grown to: "If you have money, I will kill him" type of attitude. He soon had become quite notorious for being one of the most powerful assassins on the face of the planet, and in the galaxy. He was quite well known as being emotionless, and constantly cool. Even in an impossible situation, he would keep his cool, and get himself out of the horrible situation. In the underground, he went by only one name: Shadow. Yes, physically, he was the same Shadow that had helped Kroeger to save the humans, and even at one point, he saved the man himself. But in another way, he was a different person. A different attitude, a different soul. No...in most ways, he was not the same man that had helped Kroeger. That man was long gone.

He parked his hover-bike, and kneeled down next to it, and pulled out his sniper rifle all in one smooth motion. The sniper rifle wasn't your conventional rifle that was issued to most snipers of the military. No. This one was different. Instead of using bullets, it used energy fusion to shoot rail gun shards at speeds almost that of the speed of light. It had a small reactor in the center, and the clip was held at a hardpoint behind the trigger and handle, much like the assault rifle. He aimed, zooming in. He locked on the mayor. Immediately, stats and other information came up in a column next to the viewpoint of the sniperscope. It displayed information like rate of target movement, size, height, age, weapons he's holding, and even identifies who it is for you. But he didn't need any of it. He knew it was the mayor. There were three bodyguards all around him, and he was sitting at the desk titled: mayor. How obvious could it get? Despite the nagging hints, he looked to the stats to ensure that this was the man to hit. It was.

He smiled, as he always did before firing. His sweaty finger pulled the trigger, and a half-silenced blast sounded.

*Flak*

The millisecond after it was fired, the mayor lost his entire abdomen flying through the wall into the garden. Another millisecond later, he moved the sniper rifle to the bodyguards.*Flak* *Flak* *Flak*

The three guards fell, headless. He immediately turned his attention to the helicopter, his sights right at the cockpit.

*Flak*

He fired again, and the helicopter was immediately engulfed in hellish flames, its pilot melting in the cockpit. He turned to the police cars that were coming in to investigate. Those fools.

*Flak* *Flak* *Flak*

All three police cars flew up in flames, melted scrap metal flying everywhere. Loud screeches and crashing sounds were sounded as civilians looked on in horror, where the entire police and government force of New York City were both demolished in one swift assassination. He turned to his hoverbike, and was about to leave, when a military APC came rushing in to the mayor's property, rolling over the police cars. The door flung down, and the troops dispatched out of the protection of the military APC.

It was somewhat of a new vehicle, having not been released at the beginning of the war. But by the middle of the war, the military desperately needed some APC to protect the soldiers as they were traveling towards the battlefield. Or in this case at the mayor's house, away from the battlefield. It had standard hoverjets at the bottom, four of them, one in each corner. It could hold up to 15 troops, and had two 12.7 three-barreled machineguns mounted on each side of the APC. It's armor was a bit heavier than the M12-LRVH Hover-Warthog, but the armor was still paper compared to the Covenant X-153 Hovertank that arrived to meet the troops that exited.

Shadow wasn't an anti-human person, just an anti-government person. He had lost most of his honor back at the colony, his rampaging assassinations getting out of hand. But he still had the bit of honor within him that told him to protect the humans that would surely lose. He had no qualms with those marines, and definitely did have dislikes for the Covenant. But his mission was to kill the mayor and any other obstacles, and then disappear. It was the most efficient way of killing and getting away with it. But the nagging honor within the deepest bowels of his soul told him to save these helpless humans. His contemplations disappeared as machine gun fire began to sound. Loud pings sounded as the bullets of the APC and the soldier' machine rifles bounced off the tank's enormous armor. He whispered to himself as he swung his sniper rifle from the mayor's house to the Covenant tank.

"Lets see how your armor matches up against THIS."

*Flak*

The sniper rifle fired again, and the tank exploded in enormous blue fumes. The front lines of the marines were blown back as enormous pieces of melded metal flew out in all directions. One Covenant trooper stationed inside the tank flew out of the tank, landing in a small nearby ditch. The bewildered marines slowly walked towards the tank, cautious about the destruction of the tank. As they slowly walked towards the tank, inspecting it for survivors, the commander of the military group looked up towards the hill where the shot came from. There was nothing there. Even through his infra-red eyepiece, there was no presence on that hill. Shadow was long gone before the marines would know what even happened to the tank. Meanwhile, he frowned as he flew back to 6th street, where would park his hoverbike. Why had the Covenant come into the city? One thing was for sure; he'd be tangling with much more than government figures now. Just great.